Besides my scabby knees, there was one other casualty on our Ugandan trip. Adrian, the one-eyed cat rescued from the streets of Kampala by our host, went missing from the compound after being spooked by a burst water pipe, never to be seen again. He shall be missed by all…

When I picked up my cat’s ashes last night I was a little surprised to be presented with a brown paper bag. Inside the bag, though, was a nice card from the crematorium and a very tasteful ceramic urn — click on the photo for a look.

My original plan was to spread the ashes over a communal garden space outside my condo, partly to keep her memory close by and partly to piss off my nosy gardener-neighbours who keep peering through my solarium while tending to their pointless shrubbery. But now I’m having second thoughts.

If the ashes stay inside there’s always a chance they’ll be knocked over and spilled. If they’re spread outside I’ll be even more upset every time the gardeners come out.

Your thoughts?

My cat saying goodbye to a good friend…

When I was much younger I remember finding my dad in the backyard watching a squirrel that had apparently taken a bad fall out of a tree — its back legs were paralyzed and the poor guy was slowly dragging itself around by its front claws.

My father asked me to help him stuff the animal into a plastic shopping bag, but instead of putting the creature out its misery, made me carry it up the street and set it loose in a nearby park so it would have, as he said, “a fighting chance”.

I carried the bloody bag past staring neighbours to the park and, once there, gently lowered the bag into a heavily wooded spot. I took a few steps back and watched… The squirrel first made a loud “don’t fuck with me” kind of noise, then dragged itself out of the bag and further into the woods, never to be seen by me again.

I thought this whole exercise was a complete waste of time. There was no way that this thing was going to survive. The humane thing to do would have been to kill it.

Years later, I’m still dealing with regret after euthanizing my cat this past Monday night. I found the story of another cat’s death on the web; that owner’s lingering memory is the lack of a defining moment of passing. As for me, I’ll gladly take that over the image of a confused animal bolting upright as a lethal dosage of barbiturates enters its bloodstream.

So am I ashamed that my father, a former Chief of Surgery at St. Mike’s Hospital, couldn’t end an animal’s suffering himself? Hell, no. In fact, I’m glad it runs in the family.

After getting the lump on her neck examined last week I started noticing a decline in my cat’s appetite, but I certainly wasn’t prepared for what I woke up to yesterday morning.

I found Lucy in my bathroom, in the midst of throwing up a pool of acidy green goop. Thinking her food might have turned I trashed it and opened a new can, but she wasn’t interested. I knew her condition was serious when she refused water also, and couldn’t take more than a couple of steps before falling on her side to rest.

Around lunchtime I got a call from the vet saying that the test results on the lump were inconclusive. When told about her condition the doctor advised me to keep an eye on her, and if she continued to refuse food or water to bring her in the next day.

By late afternoon it became apparent that the cat had lost control of her bodily functions, and wasn’t responding to any personal attention. A couple of times she raised her head towards the water dish that was constantly at her side, but she never followed through with a sip. In fact, the only time she sat upright was to have another violent spasm of vomiting.

When her tongue started hanging out of her mouth I called an emergency vet clinic; the receptionist there recommended that I bring her in immediately. The attending vet was concerned about dehydration, so I forked over nine hundred bucks for Lucy to spend the night and get a bunch of tests done. I hardly gave the money a second thought.

Only a few hours later I got the call from the vet, and it wasn’t good news. X-Rays showed a large cancerous tumour in Lucy’s liver that had already spread to other parts of her body. There was also a significant amount of fluid that had collected in her lungs and was interfering with her breathing. The humane thing to do was to put her out of her misery.

My lady friend and I made a final trip to the clinic, and had a few minutes alone with her in an exam room. She was still listless, and the cries of caged dogs from the adjacent kennel couldn’t have made her feel any better. We were interrupted a few times by the receptionist, first to sign a form authorizing her death and then to sign a credit card slip for her ashes. I had a partial refund on the nine hundred bucks and thought I might spread her remains in my parents’ backyard where Lucy spent her kittenhood. Now I’m thinking I might scatter them around my patio — hey, better that than have her stuffed and put on my mantle, right?

Anyway, when we where ready the vet came in and sat down. Lucy kind of sprang to attention for a moment, probably for for fear of another thermometer up the bum. We confirmed the vet that at Lucy’s age there wasn’t really a likely option for successful treatment. We could have brought the cat back home, but instead of being with her until the end we likely would have woken up this morning to find her already gone, having died a slower and more painful death.

And so, on my instruction we started the procedure.

You may have heard stories of two injections, one to put an animal to sleep and another to stop its heart. That’s a myth, I think. What happened with my cat was that a lethal dose of anaesthetic was added to her hydrating IV — the blue fluid in the photo above. Lucy bolted upright with a confused look on her face the moment the dosage entered her body, but collapsed almost instantly afterwards. And not five seconds later, the vet confirmed with a stethoscope that her heart had stopped.

We were left alone again in the exam room and I broke down and cried like I did when my father died. All the awful feelings of helplessness and grief were back again, and the guilt of a murderer added on top, even though I knew I did the right thing.

This morning I woke up without the sound of Lucy wailing for her breakfast, without the stray nuggets of freshly-strewn cat litter getting stuck between my toes on the path to my morning cup of coffee, without her lying contentedly at my feet with her front paws in a ladylike cross while I fired up my computer. I can no longer deny that I’m a cat person, no different or better than the scores of old widows around the world, whose flea-ridden crotch-licking temperamental wreckers of upholstery give them just a little bit of company as they wind down the clock towards their own demise.

And it sucks.

This is Lucy, the cat whose life I’ve so far saved twice; once when I got her from the Humane Society in 1987 and again in 1999, when my mother was returning from hospital after her stroke and didn’t want anything scurrying around the floor and upsetting her delicate balance.

Now I may have to save Lucy’s life once again. After discovering a lump on her neck I took her to my local vet to have it examined. It was hard day for both the cat and my wallet — a hundred and fifty bucks bought Lucy a basal temperature reading (by a thermometer up the bum) and a needle inserted deep into her neck to have her lump aspirated.

A sample of the fluid from the lump is currently being analyzed. If the vet can’t figure out what it is a biopsy is the next recommended step.

I’ve got conflicting thoughts on this. On one hand, my cat is 17 years old, and forking out a whack of cash to extend a declining quality of life seems both impractical and cruel. But I don’t want to be the guy who says “Guess what? You’re done” either. At any rate, I should have the test results from the lump sometime next week…